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A compromise could be reached as soon as this week between the European Union and United States over the tariffs President Donald Trump imposed on steel and aluminum, a German minister said Monday.

Talks with US officials could make it "possible to find a solution that can still avoid a decline into a heavy trade conflict," German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier told reporters outside the White House.

Facebook's chief of security said late Monday his role has shifted to focusing on emerging risks and election security at the global social network, which is under fire for letting its platform be used to spread bogus news and manipulate voters.

Alex Stamos announced the change in his work role after The New York Times reported he was leaving Facebook in the wake of internal clashes over how to deal with Russian actors using the platform to spread false or exaggerated stories to cause division among US voters.

The US State Department has a $500,000 contract with the British analysis firm facing allegations it misused Facebook user data and offered to dig dirt on its international clients' election opponents.

A State Department official told AFP on Monday the agency's Global Engagement Center has a contract with Strategic Communications Laboratories (SCL) Group, the parent company of under-fire Cambridge Analytica.

A French couple living in London went on trial Monday accused of murdering their compatriot nanny and burning her body in a bonfire after starving and mistreating her.

Sabrina Kouider and Ouissem Medouni had kept 21-year-old Sophie Lionnet as a "prisoner" and violently abused her after she moved into their southwest London home, according to an indictment read in court.

Designer Kouider, 35, dressed in black, and her partner Medouni, 40, wearing a dark suit, pleaded not guilty to killing Lionnet, who was originally from Troyes in northeastern France.

Cynthia Nixon, the US actress who shot to fame as workaholic lawyer Miranda on "Sex and the City," jumped into the race for New York governor Monday, unveiling a progressive platform championing economic equality and eschewing big business.

The 51-year-old declared her candidacy with a two-minute campaign video posted on Twitter that showed her at home with her wife and children, riding the subway, taking one of her children to school and speaking at liberal political causes.

A Spanish aid group accused Italian authorities of putting humanitarian operations in the Mediterranean at risk on Monday, after its migrant rescue boat was impounded on suspicion it was aiding illegal immigration.

The Proactiva Open Arms group, which has saved more than 5,000 migrants since the start of 2017, had its boat impounded at the port of Pozzallo in Sicily, where it arrived on Saturday with more than 200 people rescued off the coast of Libya.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas labelled the US ambassador to Israel David Friedman a "son of a dog" on Monday during an attack on Donald Trump's policies.

The scathing comments come with US President Trump still expected to launch a plan for peace between Israel and the Palestinians despite Abbas boycotting his administration over his controversial recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

"The US ambassador in Tel Aviv is a settler and a son of a dog," Abbas said in comments to Palestinian leaders in Ramallah.

Montenegro's six-time prime minister Milo Djukanovic, who dominated politics in the tiny Balkan nation for decades before stepping down in 2016, announced his comeback Monday by saying he will run for president in next month's vote.

Pro-Western Djukanovic rose to prominence in the twilight years of communist Yugoslavia and served six terms as premier and once as president before quitting politics for a third time two years ago.

A compromise could be reached as soon as this week between the European Union and United States over the tariffs President Donald Trump imposed on steel and aluminum, a German official said Monday.

Talks with US officials could make it "possible to find a solution that can still avoid a decline into a heavy trade conflict," German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier told reporters outside the White House.

The comments offered hope of a detente after weeks of increasing multinational trade frictions.

Police on Monday freed the wife of Mali's honorary consul in Barcelona after a man from the African country seeking to be allowed out of Spain held her for five hours, police said.

A spokeswoman from the Mossos d'Esquadra, the regional police force in Catalonia where the seaside city is located, told AFP they received an alert mid-afternoon "that a woman was being held against her will inside Mali's consulate in Barcelona."

The regional force and national police officers went to the building and started negotiating with the Malian man, whose identity was not revealed.

Polish lawmakers Monday voiced support for a ban on abortions in the event of foetal abnormality, paving the way for further restrictions for women in the mainly Catholic nation that already has some of Europe's strictest termination laws.

Sixteen members of parliament's justice and human rights commission voted in favour of a ban, versus nine against.

The measure now needs to be studied by a second commission before being sent to a vote in Poland's rightwing-dominated parliament.

The wave of refugees fleeing crop failures, droughts and rising sea levels will grow drastically over the next three decades if world governments do not intervene, the World Bank warned Monday.

By 2050, 143 million "climate migrants" will face an "existential threat" and be displaced, the World Bank said in a new report. That includes 86 million in Sub-Saharan Africa, 40 million in South Asia and 17 million in Latin America.

The United States warned its NATO ally Turkey on Monday it is "deeply concerned" after a Turkish-led assault on the Syrian city of Afrin triggered an exodus of Kurdish civilians.

"It appears the majority of the population of the city, which is predominantly Kurdish, evacuated under threat of attack from Turkish military forces and Turkish-backed opposition forces," State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said.

Facebook shares plunged Monday as the social media giant faced an onslaught of criticism at home and abroad over revelations that a firm working for Donald Trump's presidential campaign harvested and misused data on 50 million members.

Calls for investigations came on both sides of the Atlantic after Facebook responded to the explosive reports of misuse of its data by suspending the account of Cambridge Analytica, a British firm hired by Trump's 2016 campaign.

Tensions over trade surfaced on the first day of a G20 meeting of finance ministers on Monday as the United States and China -- whose differences are fueling fears of a trade war -- flexed their muscles in the Argentine capital.

The meeting of the world's leading economies in Buenos Aires comes days before US tariffs on steel and aluminum are due to come into force on Friday for all countries except Canada and Mexico.

The main focus of the talks is the threat of a trade war between the US and its trading partners, particularly China and the European Union.

US President Donald Trump on Monday barred US firms and citizens from dealing in Venezuela's new cryptocurrency.

Trump issued an executive order proscribing "all transactions related to" the new currency, which is designed to make up for a massive government cash crisis.

The Latin American country -- which has the world's largest proven oil reserves -- said a pre-sale for 38.4 million "Petro" units out of a total 100 million would take place between February 20 and March 19.

Trump said the currency represented an "attempt to circumvent US sanctions."

US President Donald Trump on Monday made a controversial call for drug traffickers to face the death penalty, as part of his plan to combat America's opioid epidemic -- a move that appears to be as much about politics as policy.

The Republican leader launched the proposal during a speech in Manchester, New Hampshire -- a state hard hit by the opioid crisis -- and the move was designed to burnish his tough-on-crime credentials.

Canada will deploy an infantry unit and military trainers along with attack and transport helicopters to Mali for 12 months in support of an ongoing UN peacekeeping mission, the government announced Monday.

"The task force will include two Chinook helicopters to provide much-needed transport and logistics capability, as well as four armed Griffin helicopters for armed escort and protection," Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan told a news conference.

Moroccan authorities have promised to close all abandoned mines in Jerada after months of social unrest in the former mining town in the country's northeast.

"There are more than 3,200 wells in Jerada, but only 200 to 300 are active. The others, which are abandoned and present a clear danger, will all be closed," said Abderrazzak El Gourji, secretary general of the region's police headquarters, in an interview with AFP.

The world must race to avert disastrous loss of water supplies, Brazil's President Michel Temer told a conference Monday, after the UN said some 5.7 billion people may run short of drinking water by 2050.

"There is simply no time to lose," Temer said in opening remarks at the 8th World Water Forum, which takes place all week in the Brazilian capital.

Under the slogan "sharing water," the forum brought together 15 heads of state and government, 300 mayors and dozens of experts. An estimated 40,000 people were expected to attend, organizers say.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday vowed to expand Turkey's Syria campaign to other Kurdish-held areas up to the Iraqi border, a day after ousting Kurdish militia from their former enclave of Afrin.

Indicating there was no plan for the Turkish army to call off offensive, Erdogan described the taking of Afrin as merely a "comma" and also warned Turkey could launch a surprise attack on Kurdish rebel strongholds in Iraq.

A nine-year-old boy shot dead his sister, 13, in the southern US state of Mississippi following an argument about a video game controller, local media reported Monday.

The tragedy took place Saturday when the girl refused to give up the controller, Monroe County Sheriff Cecil Cantrell said according to reports. The boy then opened fire, striking his sister in the back of the head.

The bullet pierced through girl's brain, and she was taken to a hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, in critical condition. She died Sunday.

Norway's Christian Democrats met on Monday to decide on whether to back a rightwing justice minister who has triggered outrage over a Facebook post, with a no-vote potentially leading to the minority government's collapse.

The parliament is due to consider a motion of no-confidence on Tuesday against Sylvi Listhaug of the anti-immigration Progress Party (FrP), which is currently a member of a three-party centre-right coalition.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Monday congratulated Russian President Vladimir Putin on his re-election and the two leaders agreed to work together to help achieve North Korea's denuclearisation, the foreign ministry said.

Abe expressed congratulations in telephone talks after Putin cruised to victory in Russia's presidential election, giving him at least another six years in power.

A bomb on a motorcycle exploded near a political rally in eastern Afghanistan on Monday, killing at least four people and wounding 10 others, officials said.

The blast happened as supporters of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a notorious warlord and former prime minister, were leaving the rally at a football stadium in Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar province.

Hekmatyar, who returned to public life last year after signing a controversial peace deal with the Afghan government, was at the gathering but it was not clear if he or his supporters were the target of the attack.